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Private Foxes in the Public Henhouse

This from Assault on Reason is a good example of the stuff I bought the book to read about:

The perpetrators have clearly assumed that they have little to fear from public outrage and that very few people will learn about their misdeeds.All of them assume an ignorant public. Bush would not be able credibly to label a bill that increases air pollution â€œthe clear skies initiativeâ€ â€“ or call a bill that increases clear-cutting of national forests â€œthe healthy forests initiativeâ€ â€“ unless he was confident that the public was never going to know what these bills actually did.Nor could he appoint Ken Lay from Enron to play such a prominent role in handpicking members to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) â€¦ unless the president felt totally comfortable that no one would pay attention â€¦ After members of the FERC were appointed with Mr. Layâ€™s personal review and approval, Enron went on to bilk the electric ratepayers of California and other states without the inconvenience of federal regulators trying to protect citizens from the companyâ€™s criminal behavior.Likewise, this explains why many of the most important Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) positions have been carefully filled with lawyers and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their respective industries, ensuring that those polluters are not inconvenienced by the actual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution â€¦ The private foxes have been placed in charge of the public henhouses. And shockingly, the same pattern has been followed in many other agencies and departments. But there is precious little outrage because there is so little two-way conversations left in our democracyâ€¦ This behavior could never take place if there were the slightest chance that such institutionalized corruption would be exposed in a public forum that had relevance to the outcome of elections.

None of this is news to me, but this is what I hope will become more of the meat of Gore’s analysis of our “Bush-sick” system.

They depend for their political survival on a public apparently helpless before the onslaught of the Fox News “Fair and Balanced” scheme, and the all-too-pansified slavish acquiescence of the mainstream media (the rest of the not-quite-as-bad-as-Fox) news outlets.

I remember how struck I was with my Mormon friend’s total lack of awareness of much of classic theology, instead having their entire “reading list” totally dominated by the Mormon church reading list. It is much the same with the “base” upon which Bush depends. They tend to watch Fox exclusively for their news.

Fox and , in effect, the mainstream media, allow this short-circuiting of public scrutiny, thus shielding the majority of people from seeing a clear disconnect between the “public language” and “professed policies” with the actual operation of such. David Kuo amply outlined the use of such manipulation and secrecy re: the Bush administration’s “Faith based initiatives” in his book “Tempting Faith”.

Gore gets to the “character” of the Bush administration by describing what I identify as the reason for being of the Bush administration: to serve the interests of those who bought their allegiance, and spread the “benefits” around to their own. Money launderers, in other words. Sham politics done solely for a good ol’ boy network, with all those “public interest” things, those “inconvenient, expensive things” existing only as issues to manage solely by public posture and Fox-type-planting of “news memes”.

In Bushâ€™s ideology, there is an interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that support him and his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads. Their preferences become his policies, and his politics become their business.

It doesn’t require presidential aspirations to be motivated to write a book that contains much of what ails this country’s political system. ON the other hand, I would prefer Gore to Hillary or Obama. Edwards seems to be a distant third, which is too bad.

The speech portion of Heather McTeer Toney from Saturday morning, July 13th. I am posting only the speech portion for now, as the full two camera with audience question portions and room sound system will take additional editing. Watch for the next update when it is ready.